In 13 months in office, Mr. Trump has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow for its intrusion or to defend democratic institutions against continued disruption. His administration has at times called out Russia or taken action, and even Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, speaking in Germany on Saturday, called evidence of Russian meddling “incontrovertible.” But the administration has been left to respond without the president’s leadership.

“It is astonishing to me that a president of the United States would take this so lightly or see it purely through the prism of domestic partisanship,” said Daniel Fried, a career diplomat under presidents of both parties who is now at the Atlantic Council. He said it invariably raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had something to hide. “I have no evidence that he’s deliberately pulling his punches because he has to, but I can’t dismiss it. No president has raised those kinds of questions.

No, one cannot dismiss it. Indeed, it is the most logical explanation. The only other explanation for his behavior is that he is batshit crazy which is just as bad.

Either way, we have a president in the middle of a major counter-intelligence investigation and at the center of the most shocking presidential scandal in history. That's not hyperbole. The worst case scenario here is that the president conspired with a foreign adversary (and yes, they are an adversary if not an enemy) to win the presidential election, either for their mutual personal benefit or due to some form of blackmail.

The best case scenario is that the president of the United States was an unwitting dupe but is so deranged and ignorant that he refuses to take action to prevent this from happening in the future and is actively covering up the scandal to assuage his fragile ego. And in the process, he's implicating himself in the scandal after the fact.

There are no other explanations for this and it's terrifying.

Meanwhile his cynical, nihilistic party is either turning a blind eye or actively helping him so that they can raid the US Treasury, free their friends in business and industry to wantonly pillage and burn and offer their religious zealot supporters as many human sacrifices as possible. They seem to know the end is nigh and that they can take it all with them.

Uh, so yes. It's astonishing. And it gets worse every day.

And, by the way, people who think that things will get better on any front while this dynamic exists are kidding themselves. With this depraved political partyat the zenith of their lunacy, led by an unfit imbecile, we can hope that our democratic structure holds and we survive long enough to remove them from power. That's all we've got.